I will be honest. I got the internship in Moldova last
summer through my mother, Pamela Hyde Smith, who is the
U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Moldova, and I had no
idea what I was getting myself into. That may sound
far-fetched, but as a child of two diplomats (a "dip-brat,"
as they like to say), I was used to being carted off to the
four corners of the Earth.

All I knew was that I would be writing for some
non-governmental organization called PFAP, and I figured
that the experience would be applicable somewhere down the
road. What a shock it was to step off a 24-hour plane
ride, have one night to sleep it off, then go straight to
work. So before drifting off into that familiar
jet-lag-induced slumber in the comfortably recognizable
embassy furniture, I sheepishly asked my mother what PFAP
stood for, anyway.

"Private Farmers Assistance Program," she said, without
batting an eye.

In between her visits and interviews with Moldovan
farmers, Smith made time to visit local shops featuring
hand-sewn garments.

Farmers?! I began to realize the gravity of my situation. I
knew nothing about farming. In fact, I had never even been
on a farm. A whole summer of traipsing around the fields
of Moldova and I wasn't even getting paid? Combined with
this spoiled feeling of irritation was a feeling of guilt
for having accepted an aid-work internship without
understanding what it entailed.

So it was not surprising that the first day was somewhat of
an embarrassment. I walked around pretending to know what I
was talking about and to be thoroughly interested. Igor
Vatamaniuc, my boss, flooded me with information about
Moldova's history, and sent me home with more pamphlets to
read than I had ever had at Hopkins.

Land-locked between Ukraine and Romania, just north of the
Black Sea, Moldova relies heavily on its agriculture --
primarily maize and grapes, for wine. Thankfully, a rich
layer of black topsoil contributes to the good conditions
for farming. Igor proudly told me that when the Germans
came during World War II, they loaded the soil into cargo
trains and sent it back to Germany.

The Moldovans have had a pretty bad time of it for
centuries. After the defeat of their greatest ruler,
Stephen the Great, to the Turkish rule in the late 15th
century, economic turmoil and unsteady power balances
characterized the country's history. On and off throughout
the 20th century, the Russians under Stalin, and the
Romanians under the influence of Germany and Hitler,
imposed their language and culture upon the Moldovans.
Finally, in 1942 the country became a part of the Soviet
Union -- until the U.S.S.R.'s breakup in 1991. Moldova
gained a seat in the United Nations in 1992. The result of
all this is a people more ethnically and linguistically
divided than one would think possible for a nation as small
as the state of Maryland.

On the second day I was introduced to my translator,
23-year-old Dorina Gotonoaga. She took me to lunch and we
talked some more about the history. Soon I began to
understand that she and those of her generation were
incensed over the current political situation.

Passionately, she explained how the older generation -- the
uneducated farming class -- remembers Soviet rule as a time
of stability, unaware that the democracy established in
1991 inherited a crumbling economy. As the economy worsened
throughout the 1990s, these farmers blamed the Americans
and the new democracy for all their problems. When the 2001
election came around, they saw a communist running for
office and thought to themselves, "Aha! The good old days!"
and voted in Vladimir Voronin as president.

Older Moldovans remain unaware that the only reason the
Soviet system yielded more money for farmers prior to 1991
was because of Russia's ability to provide. On their own,
the Moldovans don't have enough in the way of resources or
money.

This continuing delusion on the part of the farmers -- the
largest portion of the population -- is what the Private
Farmers Assistance Program is trying to rectify, Dorina
told me. The PFAP has set up contact centers in villages
that are stocked with information and advisors to help
farmers understand the virtues of private business, and to
explain the Western approach to agriculture, the economy,
and politics.

So what did it mean to be a "private farmer?" I knew so
little about agriculture that I didn't even know what kind
of system we used in the United States. All I knew was that
the word "private" sounded like it came from a free
country, so I knew it must be good. Dorina obligingly
briefed me, explaining that under the Soviet rule, all
farming was communal, meaning that no matter how hard a
farmer worked, he still only got the same amount of profit
from the government by year's end as anyone else.

Now that all farming is privatized, PFAP, specifically, is
trying to educate farmers who are newly privatized and
still unsure of the idea of free enterprise, something so
different from the Soviet Kolkhoz (collective)
system. The situation is complicated because it has only
recently been revealed that Russia was providing the
farmers with their only market, so when the Soviet system
collapsed it no longer provided equipment nor did it buy
their agricultural products. Moldova's market and its
technological resources were cut off, and now it is left
with outdated farming equipment and no one to buy the
measly amount of produce it has.

Gradually I became comfortable with my assignments. For the
next six weeks I went on field trips to different
judets (counties) outside Chisinau, the capital, and
interviewed newly privatized farmers to write "success
stories" about their accomplishments. One farmer, for
example, told how he'd gathered other farmers in his town
to form a collective company. They pooled together all
their resources (i.e., tractors, seeds, fertilizer) and
did pretty well for themselves, at least comparatively. My
articles were published in newsletters and brochures that
circulated throughout the farming community, and were even
sent to other branches of the NGO in Europe, intending to
set examples for other farmers.

It was probably well into the second or third week that I
noticed a trend in my interviews with these impoverished
farmers. First off, once they learned I was from America
and was working in their poor country to help them, they
treated me like royalty -- I was offered bread, fruit,
wine, and more. They expected me to tell them what
to do with their new businesses and freely asked advice. I,
a 19-year-old college student who never once had set foot
on a farm, much less knew anything worthwhile about running
a business, was supposed to advise them? I tried to
make my mother proud and be diplomatic about it, all the
while becoming more and more aware of their state of
desperation.

But that wasn't the only thing. My main concern arose when
I returned to the office and sat down to write a "success
story." Now how was I supposed to do that when these
farmers kept telling me that their main success was that
they didn't lose money this year? It was quite a challenge
to present their situations in an optimistic light, as the
farmers themselves had done, while I knew in the back of my
mind that the U.S. alone could produce more than enough
food for the entire world, and agriculture isn't even our
main source of capital. When I think that Moldova relies
almost entirely on the men and women I met on the remote,
dusty fields of Eastern Europe, I grow very sad.

Through these experiences I came to understand some
fundamental Moldovan personality traits. Very humble, the
Moldovan people working beside me at the PFAP wouldn't dare
ask me, the lowly intern, to do anything. I was not nagged
to turn in my articles -- in fact, I was rarely given any
deadlines -- and nobody ever asked to discuss anything I
had written or edited. Furthermore, they reacted with
surprise and awe if I ever suggested that we do something
differently; it seemed unbelievable to them that one could
express one's own will. All those years of oppression did
more damage than I had expected. Whereas I had always been
expected to be proactive and inquisitive and to challenge
ideas and opinions, for the people of Moldova, the concept
of freedom of speech was relatively new.

I wondered how this stagnant behavior could still be the
case at the Private Farmers Assistance Program, whose main
goal was to help and educate farmers by means of its
publications. To me, a journalism center is the closest it
gets to freedom of speech, and the Moldovans at PFAP were
afraid to question the status quo, to take an analytical
journalistic approach. Instead, they left every article
with just the barest quotations from their interviews --
completely unchallenged. This seemed preposterous to me.

I decided that this would not do, so I spoke with Igor
about changing the format to incorporate a more
editorial-style approach. He was both astounded that I
wanted to change something and delighted when he saw the
positive difference it would make. I was ecstatic that I
had contributed, ever so slightly, to this little country's
development.

I doubt that my small input will make or break the future
of Moldova's agriculture, but in some way it helped, and
the resulting feeling was and is tremendous. What does it
matter that I wasn't paid? Instead, my eyes were opened to
a world so different from my own that it made me count my
blessings and consider the things I take for granted. And
yes, now I know more about farming than anyone would ever
want to know.

Sophomore Marian Smith will return to Moldova for three
weeks this summer to renew her acquaintances and check on
the progress of her friends and colleagues at the
PFAP.